


Good for Baby

by Barkour



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Baby Fic, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-14
Updated: 2011-12-14
Packaged: 2017-10-27 07:51:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tora and Guy have some trouble drawing up a babysitting roster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Good for Baby

**Author's Note:**

> Future fic for the pre-DCnU continuity.

"No," said Guy, "no way, no how. Did you just put Booster's name down? Cross his name off the list."

Tora threw her arm across the paper and glared up at Guy. The lamp by the couch was bright behind him; it haloed his hair in copper. As the spit rag covered his shoulder and Guðrún had fallen asleep in the crook of his arm, she found it tricky not to soften. But it  _was_  a sweet tableau, Guðrún with her patch of fuzzy red hair, her tiny face pressed to Guy's chest. Tora raised her chin.

"You just said yourself that Booster is dependable."

"No, I said he's  _more_  dependable than he would've been fifteen years ago," said Guy, and there were quite a few things she could have said to that. Tora refrained. "That don't mean I want either of him looking after Baby Doll." 

As if for emphasis, he patted the baby twice on her back. Guðrún grunted; her small, delicate hand flexed in his shirt and then she relaxed again.

"You don't want anyone looking after her!" Tora whispered.

"That's not true," he protested, just as quietly. "What about-- What about, uh-- Jaime! What about Jaime? Jaime's good with kids; he loves 'em, and he won't drag her on some stupid caper."

Tora scrunched her mouth to one side, exasperated. "Jaime is in medical school. Do you really think he has time to look after a baby?"

Guy bounced Guðrún gently, his broad hand steady on her back, the spread of his fingers unspeakably careful, but the look on his face had turned mulish.

"I don't know," he said. "I never went to medical school."

"Oh, stop pouting," said Tora, but it came out more soft than prim. She supposed that was a hazard of marriage. Perhaps it was just a hazard of Guy, but then no one else seemed to have quite as much trouble pretending indifference with Guy as Tora did. "I'll put Jaime's name down if you let me put Booster's down, too."

"I'll tell you what I don't think--"

Tora tapped the pen at the corner of her mouth. "I'm sure you will."

"I don't think we should be compromising when it comes to who's gonna look after Baby Doll when we're at work."

Baby Doll snuffled then and stretched, too, her fat legs uncoiling and parting over his forearm. Guy went so still so quickly that Tora, even knowing how Guðrún would scream and thrash when she woke till Tora took her from Guy, had to press her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. He threw her a dirty look, nose wrinkling, eyes squinting; that only made it worse. 

After another snort, Guðrún settled, and Guy's shoulders drooped. Very composed, Tora lowered her hand and said, "Oh, just sit down, Guy." She patted the sofa seat beside her and smiled winsomely.

Guy gave in, of course; he always gave in, one way or another. The big softie. The big  _lug_ , she amended when he did sit next to her. He spread his legs and his thigh pushed into hers. For all the praises he'd sung of her larger bust and thicker hips, and Tora certainly didn't mind any of that, he sure hadn't remembered she needed more space now that the baby was here. Tora touched his arm, and Guy drew his leg away.

"We're only writing a list of possible babysitters right now, anyway," said Tora. She slipped her hand down to his elbow. "We don't have to pick out the ones we really want right away."

As he'd sat, Guðrún had turned; her head had lolled so she faced the ceiling. Her chest rose and fell and rose and fell, even and very small. Guy smoothed the blue onesie over her little belly.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I know. I just don't want to leave her with someone who won't have her best interests in heart one hundred and ten percent of the time."

"Neither do I," said Tora. She left off Guy's arm and reached out to put her hand beside his on Guðrún's chest. She smiled at Guy. "Or have you forgotten she's my daughter, too?"

Wonder of wonders, the weight of his brow lessened. He smiled, lopsided. Deliberately, he knocked their legs together, just once.

"Nah. I haven't forgotten. She's got your eyes, you know," he said.

"Yes," said Tora, amused, "so you've said. But since we both have blue eyes, I don't know how you can tell."

"Easy," said Guy, "my eyes ain't blue no more." He fiddled his fingers; the Green Lantern ring flashed willingly.

Tora leaned into his side. Gingerly, she tucked one leg up, half-beneath her on the couch, and then she rested her head on his shoulder. Guy shrugged, so she rose for a moment, and he looped his arm around her shoulders that she might settle in again.

"I'm not sure that's how it works," she said. 

"So, who else do you wanna add to the list? Someone who'd tear the whole damn universe in half, right down the middle--" He cut his hand through the air. "Just to get her binky back if she loses it."

"Well," said Tora, "there's always your mother."

"Just for that," said Guy, "you can put Booster on the list twice."

"She  _is_  your mother," said Tora, "and she's Guðrún's grandmother, too. She has as much a right as anyone else to see Guðrún." 

She glanced up at Guy. The angle was such the thick bones in his face--his jaw, his cheekbones--nearly hid his eyes, but she could see the muscles moving high in his neck.

"She's got a right," he said at last. "I'm not going to dispute that."

"But..."

"But you know what she's like."

"I do," Tora allowed. Guy shifted, looking down at her. Tora doodled on the paper and said, "She calls every day."

"Every day?"

"I'm trying very hard," she said, sidestepping the cue, "but if I don't get out of the house soon--if I don't get back to the League soon--I think I'm going to scream."

Guy tightened his arm around her. His fingers curled about her shoulder.

"Sorry, honey," he said.

"Don't be," said Tora, and she meant it for the most part. "It was very generous of the Corps to allow you three months' leave."

"I've got every fourth week completely off," he said, "no patrols, no missions, nada, just you and me and the baby makes three. And I'll be here on Earth the rest of the time, working out of HQ."

Tora kissed the underside of his jaw. "I know."

He stroked his hand down her arm. Guy turned and bent his head so their brows touched.

They had discussed it not long into the second month; it was one of the first things they really had discussed outside the immediate future of cribs and footsie pajamas and what to name the baby. "I'm old-fashioned enough to think someone oughtta stay home with the baby," Guy had said, and Tora had said, "I left my home so I could help people; I left so I could do good for others with my powers. How can I give them up?" And what could Guy say to that? Plenty, she supposed; he always had a great deal to say, but then Guy had been the one to fight the ghost of Sinestro for a ring, so perhaps he had understood, because he said nothing at all.

Now Tora leaned closer and cupped their daughter's fat cheek. 

"How'm I supposed to leave her?" Guy had asked Tora the night before he went on duty again. She'd smiled and kissed him and in the cool space between them she'd said, "You aren't really leaving." 

She brushed her thumb over Guðrún's nose. You aren't really leaving, Tora thought.

"There's my mother, of course," she said.

"See? Now you're talking," said Guy. He tapped his thumb on her arm. "But 'porting halfway across the world takes a hell of a charge out of the ring, and that's no good in a crisis situation."

She wrote her mother's name down in the runes with which she'd first learned to read and write.

"There's Bea," said Guy, "but she doesn't like kids."

"There's no harm in asking," said Tora, and she penned Bea in, too. "What about your friends from the bar?"

"None of them are really what you call kid-friendly," said Guy. "Damn good people, but--"

"Not good enough for Baby Doll," Tora muttered, amused.

"I don't see you suggesting any of your old buddies from the Global Guardians."

"I don't have any 'old buddies' from the Global Guardians," she reminded him. "Only Beatriz. Oh!" She sat upright and stabbed her pen at Guy.

"Hey, watch where you're pointing that thing," he said, brushing at it. "You nearly cut my nose off."

"What about Scott and Barda? They'd be perfect!" she said. "We would have to ask first, of course, but you know they love children, and Scott's retired--"

"Which means there's no chance he'd be running off in the middle of the sitting job to fight some bug-eyed creep from Andromeda," said Guy. He lit up. "C'mere, babe--"

They'd been at it for an hour, after all. Tora tossed the pad and her pen to the coffee table, rose up on her leg, slung her arm around his neck, and bussed him soundly. Guy laughed through his nose; the huff was hot on her cheek. His hand slid down her back to brace her, and the rough glide of his palm as it smoothed over her spine made her chest tighten. He was always so very warm to her, Tora called Ice, warm and very steady, not like a fire, but a radiator. His lips parted, just so. He breathed out. Snow kindled in Tora's belly. Her throat felt thick with it.

Tora sat back. Guy's hand was heavy at the small of her back. Brushing her hair back from her eyes, she said, "Don't you think we ought to get to bed?" and she darted a look at him through her lashes.

Guy began to grin.

"Why, Mrs Gardner," he said. "Are you trying to seduce me?"

"In front of a child?" She pressed her hand to her chest. "Mr Gardner! I would never do such a shameful thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," he said. Carefully, Guy hoisted Guðrún to his shoulder. The spit rag had slipped down his arm; he didn't bother straightening. "It's about time I stowed this jelly bean away in her bed anyway."

Tora snagged the waistband of his sweats as he passed her, and he stooped that she might kiss him again, lightly on his chin. Perhaps he would have stayed another moment--lingered to deepen the kiss--had Guðrún not kicked his chest in her sleep. Guy grimaced and straightened.

"Don't you rush me," he said to the baby. "Don't know where you got that from, 'cause it ain't me."

Tora leaned back and watched as he carried their daughter out of the room, his head bent to Guðrún in his arms as he talked to her. The pad had settled on the very edge of the table; a good thump and it would fall. They didn't have much of a list yet, but they'd get there, she thought. She was certain Scott and Barda would agree to watch Guðrún now and then, and of course her mother would be overjoyed to care for her granddaughter. Perhaps, Tora thought, she and Guy might even manage a couple's night out in a month or two. The thought was almost unbearably luxurious, nearly as sinful, as extravagant, as hot baths still seemed to her. A movie, and dinner at a nice restaurant, and a hotel room, yes, a room at a very  _rich_  hotel, with a hot water jacuzzi and an enormous bed as soft as a new sheet of snow, and Guy would be there with her at the movie and the restaurant and in the jacuzzi and then the bed--

If she was lucky--if Guðrún hadn't woken, and Tora would have heard her baby's screaming if she had--Guy would already be in their bed.

Standing, she pulled at her dress so it freed her legs, and then Tora turned out the light.


End file.
